A "new remarkable novel of Писемского is not actually, as know now, probably, all Russian readers, history of the thousand souls of one small part of our Orthodox world so well known to the author, and history false исправителя dispositions and civil abuses our, counterfeit state man, Калиновича. The author of excellent stories from our folk and provincial life abandoned for a time ordinary soil of the activity, carried in the circle of higher Petersburg officialdom, and with the unchanging talent of reproducing of persons, large original characters and phenomena of life tried a brush on a difficult psychical analysis, dark-and-light those artificial, dark and opposite elements from that the requirements of time and circumstances are cause people, similar Калиновичу".